Down of Mubarak, and Israel

'So many Egyptians say this country is born tonight', a correspondent reported from among a huge crowd in Cairo shortly after midnight local time. 'Thank you, Facebook, thank you, Tunisia', someone in the crowd was heard to say. This is, at least up till now, a bloodless, satyagraha-type revolution. It is remarkable that, whether the people changed the heart of their possible opponent by their sacrifice and love, as Gandhi used to say, the armed forces did not resort to violence. Both sides remained non-violent.
The only country that is silent is Israel. They are not joying in what the Egyptians are joying in. Since Sadat's approach to Israel, she has been able to count on Egypt to the South, the most populous and militarily the strongest Arab nation, not to turn hostile, and Mubarak has been the pillar of this sense of security. In view of the corrupt, undemocratic and stagnant Egyptian regime that has continued under Mubarak, however, it is now clear that Israel has chosen a wrong partner. This is the time Israel had better reorient its policy and take the hand the Egyptians may not be so hesitant to extend newly.
Of course there will be cry of Iran, Hammas, and Muslim Brotherhood. I would submit that Israel as well as Western governments should have recognized some of them as the legitimate representatives of the people when duly elected, instead of bluntly denying their claim. As for the 'Islamists' it has been a political and ideological weapon for the dictatorial regimes to corner the people into a hopeless choice between dictatorship and Islamist, a fist with which to hammer any move toward democratization. That was exactly what Mubarak represented. Such dictatorship would be congenial to the growth of political Islamism. We may recall that under the Shah of Iran, after the arrest of Mussaddiq, people gradually came to find that the only way to express themselves was by way of the Ayatollahs. Democratization is by far the better method to fight it.
A lot of noise on the surface notwithstanding, this has been an orderly movement. It has shown and strengthened the unity of the Arab world. Together with the abolition of apartheid nearly twenty years ago, it will make another example of peaceful revolution in the African Continent. The Arabs are rewriting there history. There is certainly a constructive role for Israel to play. She does not have to recall only the days of Intifada.